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| The Joke | |
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| Name | The Joke |
The Joke
The Joke is a brief utterance or performance designed to provoke amusement, surprise, or ridicule through incongruity, timing, or transgression. It appears across cultures, media, and historical periods, intersecting with figures and institutions from Aristophanes and Plautus to Charlie Chaplin and Richard Pryor, and influencing literature, theater, music, and political discourse. Its study engages scholars associated with Sigmund Freud, Gilles Deleuze, Mikhail Bakhtin, Noam Chomsky, and institutions such as University of Oxford and Harvard University.
Scholars often define jokes by structure and effect, invoking models from Sigmund Freud's theories in The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious to the semantic script theory advanced by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo at University of Florida. Typical characteristics include setup and punchline, timing associated with techniques used by Buster Keaton and Lucille Ball, and devices like wordplay found in works by William Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll. The role of surprise is linked to analyses by Norbert Wiener and computational models from Alan Turing and John Searle's discussions on language. Cultural encoding and intertextuality draw on archives at Bibliothèque nationale de France and British Library.
Forms range from one-liners favored by Henny Youngman and Rodney Dangerfield to longer narratives in novels by Mark Twain and Jane Austen. Verbal types include puns in James Joyce and double entendres in Geoffrey Chaucer; observational routines appear in Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle; satire practiced by Jonathan Swift and Voltaire; slapstick exemplified by Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin; and political jokes circulated around events like the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Digital memes propagated through platforms such as Reddit and Twitter transform jokes into multimodal artifacts, as studied by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
Ancient manifestations appear in the comedies of Aristophanes, the epigrams of Martial, and in inscriptions from Alexandria. Medieval and Renaissance humor is evident in works by Geoffrey Chaucer and in the interludes of Christopher Marlowe; the Enlightenment saw satire in Voltaire and Jonathan Swift, while the 19th century featured storytellers like Mark Twain and performers in Vaudeville circuits. 20th-century transformations involved cabaret scenes in Weimar Republic Germany, stand-up emergence in United States nightclubs, and political satire under regimes such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Global cross-pollination has been documented in studies at University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University.
Cognitive theories trace joke comprehension to script-switching models by Victor Raskin and neurocognitive work influenced by Noam Chomsky's linguistics and experimental studies at National Institutes of Health. Psychoanalytic perspectives follow Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan; developmental trajectories reference research by Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Neuroimaging studies at Massachusetts General Hospital and Max Planck Institute explore activation in regions studied by Antonio Damasio and Michael Gazzaniga, linking humor to reward circuits identified by Warren McCulloch-inspired networks. Evolutionary accounts relate to theories by Charles Darwin and sexual selection hypotheses discussed by Geoffrey Miller.
Jokes serve functions in social bonding analyzed in contexts from dowry negotiations to diplomatic exchanges at United Nations assemblies. They operate as mechanisms of resistance in movements such as Solidarity (Poland) and as tools in political rhetoric employed by figures like Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan. Humor underpins workplace culture studied by Sociological Review contributors and is deployed in therapy settings at Mayo Clinic and by proponents like Norman Cousins. Media industries including BBC, NBC, and HBO institutionalize comic formats; educational programs at Yale University and Princeton University incorporate humor in pedagogy.
Literary and performance exemplars include ancient plays by Aristophanes, satirical essays by Jonathan Swift, comedic novels by Jane Austen, sketch comedy from Monty Python, stand-up specials by Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, films by Charlie Chaplin and Billy Wilder, and television series such as Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld. Iconic jokes or routines studied in cultural history reference episodes involving Frank Sinatra, Bela Lugosi, and public feuds like those between Don Rickles and Dean Martin. Digital-era phenomena involve viral content on YouTube and participatory culture at 4chan and Tumblr.
Legal debates involve protections under laws like the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and regulatory decisions by bodies such as the Federal Communications Commission, alongside libel cases in courts like the United States Supreme Court and privacy suits in European Court of Human Rights. Ethical controversies arise in contexts of hate speech litigated under statutes like Germany's Volksverhetzung provisions and professional guidelines from organizations including the American Psychological Association. Content moderation by corporations such as Facebook and Google intersects with academic critiques by scholars at Oxford Internet Institute and policy discussions at Brookings Institution.
Category:Humor